Replace DNN default skin Vertical Menu

Hi,

I have no interest in creating my own skins, or using any others that are available - I quite like the default skins that come with DNN. I thought perhaps the following question would perhaps have been asked before, but I can't find a thread on it: Is it possible to completely replace the menu in the DNN-Gray, Vertical Menu, Full Width, with the BlueLeftNav menu from CSSNavMenu?

I have been trying, but so far have not had any luck. I've tried adding lines from CSSNavMenu Development Guide, page 2, to the 'Vertical Menu - Full Width.ascx'  for DNN-Gray. I also replaced the DNN-Gray 'skin.css' file with the one from BlueLeftNav. When that didn't look very good, I combined all the CSS from both files into one new one, which named I 'skin.css' and put in the DNN-Gray folder. Also looks horrid.

After I tried the above, I tried parsing the DNN-Gray skin in Host-Skins. I then guessed that when you parse the skin,  there's a token in 'Vertical Menu - Full Width.htm' that is causing the code in the .ascx to be replaced, causing errors. I tried replacing the token with 'SNAPSIS', but that made it worse.

I have looked through the documentation, but I'm pretty baffled as to where to start figuring this out. Obviously I've been hacking around pretty badly! - It's most likely that I have some fundamental conceptual problems with the way the Solpart menu is embedded in the default skins. Could I have some guidance as to what I'm doing wrong, please?

Thanks,

Gary

Well, I didn't exactly see the menu, just a bunch of haphazardly arranged page links; no menu border, in fact nothing like the BlueLeftNav menu. So what happened to all the menu formatting?

What's weird to me is that the BlueLeftNav skin seems very simple, but its skin.css is a lot MORE complicated that the DNN-Gray skin.css. I can't really separate the DNN skin part from the menu part in the BlueLeftNav skin.css. How much of the BlueLeftNav skin.css do I actually need to run the menu? Can I just put the relevant CCS in the existing DNN-Gray skin.css? I get the feeling it's a lot more complicated than that...

The Nav container still doesn't show up.

What part of DNN, or what part of CSSNavMenu looks at those #NavTabs... statements and injects them into skin? 'Skin.css' in DNN-Gray seems to have no idea what to do with it.

I'm guessing at the answer to my own question, above: ...In 'ThreePane.ascx' there is the following code:

<divid="NavTabsContainerBorder"><divid="NavTabsContainer"><Snapsis:NavMenuid="NavTabs"DisplayIcon="True" OnlyExpandActive="True"IndentChildTabs="True"Level="0-2"Type="Tabs"ExcludeTabs="Admin,Host"runat="server"/> 

Does this need to go into the 'Vertical Menu - Full Width.ascx' file in the DNN-Gray folder?

Now we're getting somewhere! The above worked. But I had to take out the two lines referenced in the CSSNavMenu Developer's Guide:

The Skin Parser is to take the html format of the skin with [tokens] and turn it into the .ascx skin that is needed on the server.
The skin will never be parsed again unless you re-parse it from the UI.
If you want to make sure your .ascx file gets updated correctly even if you re-parse it then you can put the same code that you added in the .ascx file into your .html file.

The code will then get transferred over to the .ascx file.
You could also use tokens, but it is much harder to set it up so that you get all the properties (with the skin.xml file).

Excellent!  The menu is now running in my default DNN skin. I will probably experiment with getting some of the other menus to work in the same way, but for now that's a good start.

I'll need to figure out now how to get the Admin, Host dropdown to show up, but I'll start another thread if I have any questions about that.

Thanks for your facilitation so far.

Gary